Your Turn: Feb. 28

Updated 4:53 pm, Thursday, February 27, 2014

Photo: Torin Halsey / Associated Press

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Commenting on remarks about “Third World” corruption made by Attorney General Greg Abbott, a reader says corruption usually follows poor economic conditions and politicians who place their political fortunes above constituents. less

Commenting on remarks about “Third World” corruption made by Attorney General Greg Abbott, a reader says corruption usually follows poor economic conditions and politicians who place their political ... more

Photo: Torin Halsey / Associated Press

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Parker

Parker

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Your Turn: Feb. 28

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Back to basics

Every screwball idea some of our city leaders want is total baloney. We don't need streetcars; we need the streets fixed. What is so hard about that simple idea?

Everything you read or see on TV has the same plea in it somewhere. Fix the streets!

Looks as if our overpaid city manager looks the other way on this issue also. Every taxpayer in this city pays for street repairs but the money obviously goes somewhere else.

One of her recent commentaries, “Obamacare's failure can be seen as poetic justice,” (Other Views, Feb. 19) was a good example of what good journalism should be about: publishing the facts in a very simple and straight-forward manner. We need more honest columnists like Ms. Parker.

Her final statement, “How does one defend spending $1.2 trillion for a health care overhaul that disincentivizes people to work and that leaves us with 31 million uninsured?” was a question we all ought to be asking.

I would like to comment on recent remarks by Attorney General Greg Abbott about “Third World” corruption in South Texas.

Political corruption has been a fact of life everywhere I have lived. I am 86. I was raised during the Depression in Jackson County, Mo., the home of the Pendergast machine. Through the '40s, I worked as a caddy, learning that the crooks on the west side of State Line Avenue were called Republicans and the crooks on the east side were called Democrats. I overheard them making deals. (No one pays attention to small boys with big ears and a shoulder full of golf bags.)

I was trained by the U.S. Navy as a communicable disease epidemiologist and have lived and worked in “Third World” countries, particularly in Central and South America. I am the survivor of two military tours.

The principal characters of a Third World country are: a government consumed by self- interest rather than the needs of its constituents, an illiterate population, little or no health care, a poor and overworked educational system, few or lousy roads marked by barrios or, in South Texas, colonias.

I will leave it up to you if that describes our present reality in South Texas.

R.D. Comer

Insulting voters

Will somebody please tell the Republican candidates for the offices of Texas attorney general, lieutenant governor and comptroller that President Obama is not on the Texas ballot this year?

How dumb do they think we are?

I hope these candidates will stop insulting our intelligence and start working more to drag Texas into the 21st Century.